5/11/2014

Interview: Big Booty Bill and Da Fish


An excerpt from a minizine I printed for Ephemera Fest, here we have an interview with Triple B, one half of the vapor-rap duo 'Big Booty Bill and Da Fish'. He also manages his own tape label, Kandahar Homedubs

How did Big Booty Bill and Da Fish get their start? What was the first song you recorded and how have you guys improved since then?

big booty bill and da fish was started as an inside joke. i was really involved with the vaporwave scene back when things were just starting to get big (i remember when the now-infamous dummy mag article came out), and i thought it was hilarious that a couple of people were trying to turn vaporwave into this online subversive/political movement about communism and radical politics and the like. i also find white rappers who do nothing but rap about being white really funny. i wanted to rap over vaporwave before anyone else did because i saw the entire "movement" as a huge joke. we had made a couple of rap songs in the past, just for fun. da fish had just gotten an ipad, and it came with garageband. we made "college song" on a car ride to new york, and that's also where we came up with our rap names. it wasn't until later that i threw that onto "very omnipotent swag corporation" and started really working on big booty bill and da fish.

What rappers do you particularly enjoy? Does Da Fish listen to rap? Besides that and Vaporwave, what do you dig?

i really like naughty by nature and danny brown, and i think the new drake album is good. i'm also getting into some bones/teamsesh stuff, i actually sent him a beat a few weeks ago. when we recorded the first two mixtapes, da fish had never heard any rap songs, but he's really into eminem now. he's really more into classic rock, like the beatles and the monkees. i don't listen to vaporwave that much anymore, aside from luxury elite. i've been exploring the carolinas' local music scene, so i'm gonna shoutout black santa and ivadell because i've been playing them a lot. i also like dean blunt and loumar.

Dude, Dean Blunt hits so hard!!!

so true. i know someone who is a hardcore hype williams fan, he's spent like hundreds of dollars on purchasing their entire discography. he gave me a copy of the narcissist on cd-r, it sounds amazing

Amen man. On a side note, what do you think is the all time dankest meme? Also how come the name of the label facebook changed from Don't Hate If You Get Memed On?

it changed because people were having issues finding us and also facebook kept seeing the word "meme" and assuming it meant "community page" which was messing with the settings on here so i changed it. also da fish is with my mom picking up dinner right now so i'll have to get back to u on the dank meme question.

No problem, what kinda food is he getting?

subs from which wich. yum yum yummy

ah, rad we just got one of those in our town. In the meantime, tell me a little about the Kandahar Homedubs label.

try the milkshakes! as for kandahar homedubs: i started it because i was tired of seeing my friends get screwed over by people who had no idea what they were doing. i know people who had to buy copies of their own release to give to their parents, and i also know people who got no profit at all from their tapes, which really bugged me. i also wanted to start a label like artist in residence, but make it so everyone could afford it. i always treat every aspect of each release as its own work of art, especially the packaging. i see a lot of really ambitious labels that put out great music, but it's boring to look at! i want to be the alternative to second-hand, individually-dubbed cassettes with "a" and "b" hastily written on them in sharpie.

How did you get in touch with Amy and Luxury Elite to put out releases? What's the background on those guys?

lux and i go way back. i knew her before she started the project, and she was totally down for putting something out through my label, so we just threw some ideas around and came up with 101.7 WAVE II. i met amy through a friend and instantly fell in love with how weird his music is, and also how he's only 15 and is basically making this music against the wishes of his parents. i think that's really cool

Do you have any Kandahar stuff lined up for the future? What about new Big Booty Bill and Da Fish material?

i got an account on datpiff so yeah we're putting out a new mixtape soon and it will be on cassette too. as for kandahar, we're repressing the lux tape and putting out some stuff from a few friends. also send me your demos!!!!!

Who would you most like to put a tape out for one day?

dean blunt or saint pepsi. i was gonna put out something by him but he's dealing with label stuff with carpark so that's been put on hold

Where do you get your tapes/tape materials from?

way too many places. for packaging, i usually go to aliexpress or dhgate, since it's cheap. for tapes, i have a gigantic amount of maxell communicator c30s that i got off ebay, but i'm starting to buy off tapeline.co.uk for nicer, tabs-out tapes. i got the custom rubber stamper thing off ebay. it's really neat, you use a pair of tweezers to stick individual letters into the slots. that's how i made the 101.7 WAVE II labels. also, da fish is having a hard time figuring out what his favorite meme is.

I don't blame him, too many good ones out there

so true. i think my favorite meme is "symphony no 9: scherzo" aka the song that everyone used on their videos because it was the song that came with windows xp. is that a meme? if not then the dankest meme is bazinga. so true. i think my favorite meme is "symphony no 9: scherzo" aka the song that everyone used on their videos because it was the song that came with windows xp. is that a meme? if not then the dankest meme is bazinga. da fish says "that's 65 percent more bullet per bullet" is the dankest meme

What do you like to do that's not music related?

hang out with friends, take weird instagrams, and sometimes i read comics. da fish likes to play video games and "swag all night"
i think looking for weird stuff on ebay is my most destructive habit

What's the weirdest thing you've found?

i bought a guitar from the ukraine. it was made at the height of the soviet union. the guy sent it to me in a cloth bag and by the time i got it, the neck was almost entirely snapped off. it's getting repaired right now. and i'm gonna use the refund money to pay for it.

Dude that's awesome!

da fish says he likes to go on the "totally bizarre" category on ebay from time to time. he just found a preserved turkey heart.

That's pretty bizarre.

"is that even legal?" -da fish